RTV Theory and Practice - Special Issue

students , union members, ethnic groups, members of "fringe" potitical and religious groups , etc. , who thereby acguired both increased faith in the rightness of their various causes and increased Knowledge of how to use the media for their own ends . 10 ' Part of the underlying psychology of the many citizens' movements found expression in the title of E.F . Schumacher's 197 3 booK Small is Beautiful. Although Schumacher tooK the perspective of an agricultural economist, it was easy to apply the overall philosophy to many things , including radio . Most of the shipboard pirates of the 1960s had disappeared by the early 1970s , thanKs largely to a coordinated effort on the part of most Western European nations to get rid of them , but land-based pirates began to crop up in the 19705, particularly in Belgium , the Netherlands , Great Britain , ltaly and France . They soon became legal in ltaly, đue to loopholes in the laws governing radio licensin9 . but they remained illegal in most of the other countries , some of which were more efficient in tracKing them down than were others . (West Germany was particularly efficient , the Netherlands particularlv inefficient . ) Not all of the new generation of pirates were social, cultural or political activists, but many certainly were: labor unions anđ small political parties led the way in ltaly and in France , ethnic groups and 'counter-culturists' were notable in Great Britain , and there were combinations of these in' other countries , as well as a number of would-be disK јосКеуз in all of them . Modest financial resources and the need to remam small in order to escape detection (It's very difficult to move a 5 or 10 Kilowatt transmitter quicKly if the authonties are closing in!) Kept most of the new pirates local, but also gave many of them a special sense of identification with the community , which might even warn station staff at the first sight of a radio detection van in the neighborhood . Local merčhants began to advertise over some of the stations something they hadn't been able to do m nations such as the Netherlands and West Germany, where authonzed stations couldn't саггу ađs for regional ог local products or services . (That restriction served to protect the fmancial mterests of the newspaper industry. ) All that illegal activity was taKmg place - and it resulted m dozens of stations in come countnes and m a few there were some mteresting legal developments , as well: 88l . looal radio stations starting m 1967, independent Broadcastmg Authonty (U.K.) local radio stations startmg m 1973, major expahsion of Scandmavian regional radio services throughout the late 19705, and , perhaps most 'revolutionarv 7 of ai . e authonzation of non -commercial 'commumtv' radio stations m

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